Eideard

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Low turnout in South Korea’s first vote on a social policy on Wednesday left in place a program in Seoul providing free lunches for 810,000 elementary and middle school students, a victory for the liberal opposition, which had urged a boycott.

Though the voting, like the lunch program, was confined to Seoul, the capital, it took on national proportions with all political parties joining the debate in a sign that, after decades of bickering over civil liberties, the economy and North Korea, they were now entering the unfamiliar field of social welfare.

Mayor Oh Se-hoon, urging more restraint in welfare spending, had asked voters to limit free lunches to only lower-income children, at an estimated savings of $100 million a year. His conservative ally, President Lee Myung-bak, supported him by joining in his denouncement of “populist welfare.” The liberal opposition urged supporters of universal free lunches not to vote, so the result would not be valid.

When the polls closed, only 25.7 percent of the city’s 9.4 million eligible voters had voted, lower than the 33.3 percent minimum for a valid result, leaving in place the broad lunch program set up in January by the opposition-dominated City Council. By law, the votes of an invalidated referendum are not counted.

“I humbly accept the voting result,” Mr. Oh said. Earlier he had vowed to resign if the proposal he backed lost.

The opposition called on Mr. Oh to immediately step down. “Because of one politician’s selfish decision,” said Lee Yong-seop, spokesman for the opposition Democratic Party, “our society had to suffer a terrible ideological conflict and social unrest.”

RTFA for the ins and outs of the discussion, of the considerations forced on voters because of beancounter politicians who wanted to save money by exaggerating class differences.

Sound familiar?